Writer wants to live in debt-free Australia again

Ken Price asks me a direct question in his frantic letter (“Where would you rather live, Mr Wiseman?”, Bendigo Advertiser, Saturday, November 10).

Ken Price asks me a direct question in his frantic letter (“Where would you rather live, Mr Wiseman?”, Bendigo Advertiser, Saturday, November 10).

A letter I must be given the opportunity to answer. Contrary to Mr Price’s assertions, the Coalition and many independent economists have loudly and repeatedly warned Labor about the decline in Europe and its effect on China and our national income.

But Labor is in denial, with Wayne Swan assuring us “the resources boom isn’t over” as he spends hundreds of billions we don’t have.

Fiscal ineptitude which prompted the Australian Financial Review to warn us last week, “Without the China boom, Australia’s budget would be in similar shape to the US and UK”.

Despite claiming a reduction in Commonwealth revenue, Labor is spending $100 billion a year more than it was five years ago.

It has run out of our money, not because of the global financial crisis behind which Mr Price hides, but because it spends like a drunken sailor.

Regardless of Mr Price’s “straw-man” arguments, the mining tax was designed to raise $3 billion a year and raised nothing, but Labor had already borrowed and spent its hoped-for-revenue on the “spreading the benefits of the boom’’ family payments. A new annual outlay of billions, which is designed to continue forever, despite the failure of the tax.

Although Mr Price can see “the rest of the world is a basket case”, Labor’s massive borrowing and spending binge shows no sign of stopping. It intends to borrow, or squeeze out of our pockets, another $122 billion to pay for unfunded schemes like the NDIS.

Policies so airily announced by Labor which cruelly raised the hopes of many, only to crush them again when they discovered Gillard’s health, education and dental care promises are as hollow as her no carbon tax pledge.

Where would I rather live? Well unless there is a change of government to one which can live within its means, we are all destined to enjoy not just Greek like sunny skies, feta and olives, but debt too.